


Sleight of Hand / The Penny Drops

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: Shiraishi is determined to put the brakes on Chitose's more excessive "woo-woo yoga" tennis practises, but run smack into a few interesting blind spots of his own. Part of the I Ching Table of Prompts challenge.
Relationships: Chitose Senri/Shiraishi Kuranosuke
Kudos: 2





	Sleight of Hand / The Penny Drops

**Author's Note:**

> PG13, for nascient sexuality and naughty words.
> 
> I Ching 
> 
> 57\. Penetrating Influence with change in the 5th line to become 53. Developing.

_Work, work, work._

Even the frogs which hid in the wet and grassy ditches near the tennis courts seemed to take up the refrain. 

Compound fencing jangled and a _hhhuzz_ of impressed voices signaled the end of try-outs. The late afternoon sun ricocheted off neatly lined columns and rosters on Shiraishi Kuranosuke’s clipboard, causing him to squint. His eyes felt taxed from eagling in all day on players, their postures, footwork, strokes and hosts of other details. His wrist itched under its tensor bandages, lingering effects of the past weekend’s misadventures at Osaka’s newest club. He ignored the swish and wriggle of tennis skirts from admirers in the girls’ club. He tried to ignore the bee which circled around Watanabe’s head in comic response to soft snores from under the advisor’s hat. Toyama’s voice, as he yelled at the victor however, was piercing enough to make everyone wince.

“Oi, Kuuuuuuma-chaaaan!” 

Shiraishi tried not to stare like everyone else. That shaggy hair did look like it had been plucked lock by lock off an old bear-skin and crazy-glued to his head, probably why the kid chose this bear moniker for him. 

“Pick me! I’m the one you want to play next.”

The name “Chitose Senri” finally came into focus. Shiraishi ticked off the win column. 

Chitose dismissed Toyama with a sweep of his hand, a lazy gesture, casual and friendly-seeming—hard to read anything else in it, but … dismissive all the same. It didn’t deflate Toyama, but Shiraishi bristled inwardly, where nobody could see him snarl. Something about this guy ….

A barely audible snort puffed out from under Watanabe’s hat. Shiraishi’s eyes darted to where light dappled over his prone figure. Limbs akimbo as though drunken, the advisor was sprawled across the coach’s bench, his hat pulled so low that he could almost convince anyone he’d slept the whole time. 

“That force-field thing?” A fragment of Hitouji’s conversation with Konjiki and Ishida carried over the breeze, along with Ishida’s grunted acknowledgement. “Like a space wobble?”

It seemed that Chitose had developed a mystique among the other players, and Watanabe had been watching Shiraishi all day long with the same heightened intensity that Shiraishi had focused on Chitose. Shiraishi considered the implications. Watanabe was much quicker to perceive undercurrents which drove his students than Shiraishi, and Shiraishi was surprisingly good at spotting, understanding and exploiting undercurrents.

Of course, in the context of the tennis, Shiraishi had heard of Chitose before—recognized the name instantly on the courts, even before observing his impressive skills during these qualification matches. It was off the courts that his memory had not served so well.

Everyone else in Shitenhouji’s tennis team should’ve known of him as well, or at least of his impressive skills. How could they not, as one of the notorious Two Wings of Kyuushuu who had jockeyed the Shishigaku team to the Nationals? 

Why, then, did his opponents underestimate him each and every game? Shiraishi’s eyes narrowed even further as he tried to deconstruct Chitose’s methods. Correct placement would bear on their chances of getting to the Nationals, and after last year’s disappointment, Shiraishi had little tolerance for luck. 

Yet Chitose had not only soundly beaten, but shut out all his opponents without so much as breaking into a sweat, without seeming to try. It took enormous strength to make that look easy, and he had never once lost that dreamy, distant look in his eyes—like he was thinking about something else, something pleasant like a day at the beach, or listening to music … or having sex. Shiraishi forced his brain not to go any further. Even if Chitose hadn’t been a full head taller than him, even if he didn’t have at least fifteen kilos over on him, Shiraishi would’ve been more careful on the courts than these guys had been. 

Something weird was going on. 

The new guy grated on him. Some of that had to do with their accidental encounter at the dance club on Saturday—the one where Shiraishi didn’t recognize him, even though he had looked slightly familiar. Mostly it was the dream-like aura, the lazy swinging of his arm during his matches, the double-spiral swirling of shoulders and upper stomach in counterpoint to hips, the blurry swoop of his racquet as it drove its strokes home— _as though he hypnotized his opponents._ It made Shiraishi feel like the foundations of everything which supported him—the very underpinnings of his physical world—weren’t as solid as he believed, like they could disappear with one such swoop.

No way! He would stake his physical reality and the solid foundations of his tennis against this con man and his swirling, swooping prestidigitation any time. 

“Kuma-kuma-kuma-kuuuuun, play with me. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, come onnnnn!” The kid did not know when to give up. His fingers were woven through the fence links, and he bounced so impatiently and so vigorously that a book fell out of his jacket pocket unnoticed—manga, kid’s manga. “There’s plenty of sunlight left.” 

“Idiot first years.” 

Shiraishi darted a sharp look to the source of the grumbling, a group of the disgruntled and disqualified. Shitenhouji’s wild new wunderkind had handed their hats back to them, all except for Zaizen Hikaru, and while Zaizen had more talent in his pinky fingernail clippings than the rest of these second years put together, only the luck of the draw had saved him from a match with Toyama that day. From Zaizen’s smile—the sort of smarm that set his teeth on edge—Shiraishi could tell he hadn’t been the one to speak up. Not this time, even though he had clearly agreed with what was being said. Irritation danced like static electricity across the captain’s grin.

“Anyone who hasn’t made it past the third match had better start putting away nets on the empty courts,” he declared, bending over to pick up Toyama’s book.

The boys stared, dumb and immobile. Thick leathery petals spun onto their heads off the early blooming Magnolia trees near the court, as though their captain wasn’t the only one trying to swat something into their skulls.

“As in right now.”

“But we’re second years.”

He smiled until they caught the glint—nothing more than a quick flash, like light playing off a switchblade. They moved on the double. Toyama started moving with them. 

“Not you.” He reached out with his injured hand and gripped the boy’s shoulder. Strangely, Toyama winced. “You’re on the competition circuit. You’re a regular. Your only job now is to win. Congratulations! But a word of advice—”

The kid wasn’t focusing on his words. Panic rippled across his face.

“It’s Kuma- _sempai_ to you, and I’m Shiraishi- _buchou_ , not Shiraishi-taichou.”

Toyama’s eyes were fixed on the tensor bandage wrapped around the team captain’s wrist. Puzzled, Shiraishi pulled his arm back and looked at it. Nothing out of place there. No blood or dirt. The wild boy took off, leaving Shiraishi behind, staring at his bandaged arm, curious and confused, and then at the manga which had been abandoned.

Something was definitely weird. A cursory flip through led to some pages in a comic whose mad scientist villain destroyed his victims by unwrapping bandages off his mutated hand and laying it upon them, reducing them to sand. 

Well, damn! He had been minding his business at the Underlounge when he hurt his wrist. He couldn’t help it that he had to wear a bandage.

Okay, so maybe he had gotten a little overheated, a little overexcited. After the long, wet winter, it turned out the birds and bees weren’t ready to crawl off and die in dark holes from sunlight deprivation after all; and without tennis opponents to slowly, steadily and manifestly decimate, Shiraishi had had to resort to other ways of blowing off extra … steam. This, for no other reason besides that it was finally spring and he had this teenaged male athletic body in its prime, responsive to every whim, every impulse, maybe even in defiance of gravity. 

Dance clubs worked: the darkness; the strobes, spotlights and lasers; the heat and closeness of bodies; the hypnotic beats; the trance-like movements. He loved the way the unceasing jabber in his head would finally shut up and his body took over until he could tire himself out enough to sleep.

So when he jumped onto one of the small platform stages to show off his new moves, he was completely surprised when someone grabbed his jeans by the back of the waistband and yanked—some irate Johnny boy who didn’t like being upstaged. 

His injuries might’ve been a lot more serious if it weren’t for this guy, this newcomer. Shiraishi had fallen backwards, and the drop was a good three feet, enough to maybe concuss him, crack a rib, or even shatter a disc. He could’ve been screwed for the rest of his life, except for Chitose. Chitose, who had now looked so vacant on the Shitenhouji courts, who had put on this ethereal affectation, who seemed to be only partially invested in whatever was going on around him, the damned fraud! Even though they had never met and were—for all intents and purposes—complete strangers, Chitose had leapt forward to break his fall. 

Shiraishi carefully considered those powerful arms, and that solid torso, and … and that very perilous business of a hand sliding south where wayward hands had no business. He considered how the whole room grew otherworldly and scary, and how sounds filtered through from so far away; all except the thump of his heart in his ears—loud enough to shut everything else out. Movements slowed, stopped, or maybe they only seemed to because his pulse had raced so fast, but the sliding stopped at the cusp of uncertainty, the point where he couldn’t be sure. The touch of Chitose’s hand disappeared, Shiraishi’s head cleared, the room sped up, his sense of sound returned to full volume, and that was it. 

Apart from being a little winded and losing his dignity, it seemed at first that Shiraishi had escaped that fall fairly unscathed. He was back on his feet in seconds and hopping mad, ready to launch himself at the Mr. Grabby-Hands, who he initially thought had pulled him down.

“Shiraishi Kuranosuke,” the guy said which stopped him short. 

Then the guy pointed over to a sour, pissy-faced jerk in black vinyl who was clearly the real perpetrator. Shiraishi spun to the left, fluid as a volley, and that’s when bouncers intervened. After he was tossed onto the curb, he couldn’t find his benefactor and find out how he knew him. Instead, Shiraishi heard the quick sharp _brratt_ of a police siren at the curb warning him to make himself scarce. 

Now here was Chitose, magically rematerialized. His unknown benefactor was right here in his tennis club, angling for a position on the _competitive_ team right now. Angling? With his skill, the spot should be a given. Yet there was no urgency driving him. No passion. Not even very much interest, it seemed. What did he really want? Why was he here?

Shiraishi slammed the clipboard onto the bench.

“Oi, oi, Shiraishi-kun, so forceful, so dominant!” Watanabe struggled to a sitting position. The first time Shiraishi had been smacked down with this style of overly familiar repartee, it shocked him but he had been quick enough to fire it back. That was probably the real reason he had been picked as captain. 

He held up his thumb and forefinger in the universal sign for three inches.

“Wah, so high maintenance.” Watanabe yawned and smacked his lips, a sloth wondering if it would take too much effort to give itself a scratch. The air was heavy with the smell of fresh-mown grass and herbicide. They could hear a faint retort of a ball bouncing against asphalt, and boys’ voices shouting and cheering from the basketball courts where that team’s try-outs were still underway. Everything slowed down around Watanabe. “Somebody has been getting somebody else all touchy today. The question is how.” 

Shiraishi pretended to ignore him. 

Chitose was bent over at the sinks, supple, well-shaped. His t-shirt was peeled off, and his torso was nicely tanned, the result of many shirtless summers. Droplets glittered like diamonds and fresh dew in the sun as he splashed water over his face, neck and shoulders.

“Where do you plan to slot him?” 

Shiraishi considered how boys changed between their first and third years of middle school, how their bodies still grew and developed, but they appeared to be adult. Chitose had probably looked like he had been an adult since the first year, maybe even sooner. Wait a minute, he choked, why was he looking at a guy that way?

Watanabe cleared his throat. “Our new line-up?”

What was the newcomer up to?

“Too soon to tell,” Shiraishi replied.

Watanabe decided to scratch after all, under his chin, fingernails raking against stubble, _skritch, skritch, skritch,_ aggravating as a blackboard.

“Singles one,” he sniffed. 

Shiraishi felt insulted. “I could take him.”

“Mmhmm,” the advisor agreed, moving up to poogle an ear.

That caught Shiraishi off-guard. “So, why—uh, in first?” And after another minute. “Even Toyama could take him.”

“No, he couldn’t. Not in his state.”

Shiraishi shot him a ‘get real’ look.

Watanabe took out a cigarette and lit it. “Because that Toyama kid needs his own containment field. He’s all over the place—leaks more energy than a nuclear reactor. Loose cannon.”

“Energy!” Shiraishi snorted his contempt for the Chitose-speak.

“Already noticed you have how accustomed to energy working is our Chitose, my impetuous Jedi youngling?”

“ _Our_ Chitose?”

“Heh-heh-heh, and you’re gonna have lots of fun with that Toyama kid. Better find him a short leash, or you can consider yourself invisible and irrelevant.”

Shiraishi frowned at his bandages, “I’m not completely sure how, but I think I already have. Chitose’ll have to fight for his privileges though, same as anyone.”

“He’ll walk away.” 

A _thok_ came from the far court where the second years were horsing around. 

“Let him.”

Watanabe’s eyebrows lifted. A squirrel chattered in the bushes, sounding exactly like the nagging, bitching, contradicting voices in Shiraishi’s head. 

“You want the bees to pollinate your flower,” the aggravating man started to sing-song, “you’ve got to offer them some nectar.”

“We’ll keep our pollen to ourselves, thank you very much.” Shiraishi sang-song back, while packing up his personal equipment into the carry-all.

“Oh-ho! Now you’re just being stubborn.” Watanabe tried the direct approach. “Seems to me I heard someone moaning about how much he wished he could’ve at least had a chance to play at the Nationals.”

Shiraishi zipped up the pencil case with more force than usual.

“I also seem to recall that same someone mentioning that, in the end, the only thing that mattered was winning.”

“I’m not convinced he’s interested in going to the Nationals with us, okay?”

“Is that soooooo?” Watanabe’s voice was even flatter and more lacking in curiosity than usual. 

“I’m not sure he even wants to be on the team.” Shiraishi seemed to think this was the end of the discussion.

“In that case, there’s only one thing left to do,” Watanabe continued.

“What?”

“Ask.”

Before the Junior East Division Training Camp, no one had ever noticed, but the polished white tile corridors in the athlete facility’s sleep quarters made it obvious. It was still only five-thirty in the morning. Small sounds grew louder, lofted up the stairwells and magnified through the empty halls. It was impossible for a person to retch their guts out in the bathroom without waking people up. Shiraishi sallied in to parse a few clipped verbs with whoever had gotten so sick—sick enough to go home and sleep until they made a full recovery. There, he discovered that Chitose's morning yoga asanas were really gross. Really extreme and gross.

The senior refused to desist. “This is an important part of my physical purification rituals. It increases my sensitivity.” 

“What the hell? Sensitivity, my high butt-squeaks! We follow the team’s nutritionist’s menus. They’re designed to optimize our performance. Throwing up your breakfast defeats the purpose, not to mention lessens our chances of getting to the Nationals.”

“But I’m not throwing any food up. I do this first thing in the morning precisely because I have nothing in my stomach. It’s a purification technique, not a fast. It gets rid of excess mucous. Yogis have been doing this in India for thousands of years.”

Shiraishi had never wanted to wipe that droll, bone-dry expression off Chitose’s face so much. The guy must’ve thought he was an idiot, that just because his style was euphemistically called ‘bible tennis’ that he didn’t know jack about anything.

“We’re here to play tennis, not become yogis.” 

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.” 

The air that came in through the cracked window was especially bracing that morning, but at least it was fresh. At least there wasn’t an awful smell lingering about the room. This was important, because Shiraishi was taking quite a few very deep breaths.

“Yes,” he bit out. “Yes, they are. Yogis sit in meditation all day; tennis players are physically active and engaged. We do not hold ourselves in _seiza_ and detach. We’re here to focus on our sport and be grounded and integrated. It’s as physical as it gets. You want to be a swami and space out, take your fundoshi and begging bowl, and go to India. Here, we work. Hard!”

“Can you show me any evidence that what I’m doing is harmful?” 

“Sure, I can probably hunt up some studies on the internet. So what? Just stop.”

“It’s unreasonable of you to insist on this change without showing me any proof. This practice helped me achieve my present level of game, and I sure haven’t heard any complaints lately about my present level of game.”

Shiraishi had to think about that one. He had been so ready to write Chitose off as some sort of mental lightweight that he wasn’t expecting logic. “My main concern is getting the team to the Nationals.” 

“Wait! Wait! You think I don’t want to go to the Nationals?” Chitose looked stunned.

Shiraishi crossed his arms and set his jaw stubbornly. 

“You actually think that.”

Shiraishi finally decided to come clean. “I don’t just think that you aren’t as committed to going all the way with Shitenhouji, I know it. Every practice, you show this to us with your words, your actions, and your tennis. When it’s time to play, you hold back. When you’re asked for feedback, you clam up or offer some up useless _koan._ You’ve been bragging for weeks about _Muga no Kamchatka_ —”

_“Muga no Kyouchi.”_

“Whatever, so far nobody’s seen it, and for all your vaunted energy control, you won’t even lend a hand to your _kohai_. Whatever motivates you with regards to the Nationals, it sure isn’t the team.” 

“What does it matter what my motivations are if, in order to fulfil them, I need to get to the Nationals?” Chitose had moved from dumbfounded to angry. “It was important enough that I even left Shishigaku and came to Shitenhouji.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Shiraishi shot over his shoulder as he prepared to sail out of the washroom. “That sort of lone cowboy approach works just fine for Grand Slam or the Masters, if you ever get there. The National Junior Tennis Championships are a team sport.”

Then he caught the heel of his toilet slipper on a corner of the muslin bandage that Chitose had used in his _vastra dhauti_. Because he had interrupted Chitose, it dangled over the edge of the sink and across part of the floor. Shiraishi’s heel started skidding out while his body was distorted in a half-twist that looked like it was going to end very badly.

For the second time since they met, Chitose leapt forward. By hooking his arms under Shiraishi’s, circling them around his chest, and gathering him close, he saved the other boy from another potentially injurious tumble. 

Again, Shiraishi experienced that strange warped field sensation as he froze against Chitose’s chest, the eerie slowing of time, the hush of silence so intense that it roared, the darkening of everything on the peripheral edge of his vision. At first it was shock—with pounding heart and blood beating in his ears, his face reflected white in the full-length mirror next to the showers—and then as the warmth and calm and resolute strength from Chitose’s body slowly filled him and he felt that second powerful heart beating along with his, Shiraishi found he didn’t want to move. Because it felt strangely comfortable and solid and right. Because when it counted, Chitose was reflexively heroic, no matter how selfish he could be the rest of the time. Because he felt more than welcome there, like he could stay in those strong arms for hours and Chitose would be more than happy about it. He knew this because Chitose was in no hurry to pull away. He was just fine resting there while Shiraishi’s pulse slowed and the adrenaline cleared. In fact, Shiraishi felt Chitose’s nose tucked against his hair, breathing in his scent. 

He let out a sigh, and pulled himself to his feet, supported by Chitose. He was fighting all kinds of conflicting feelings when he turned to add, “And another reason you’ve got to quit doing this is because it’s so damned unsanitary.”

Chitose’s expression wasn’t dreamy after all. It was … something else, something that Shiraishi experienced like a swooping, swirling feeling in his gut, but didn’t know what to call. Chitose was present, one hundred per cent. “Tell you what, let’s have a wager. One game-set-match. You win, I stop doing this asana.” 

“And if I lose?”

A sly smile started curling across his face, but stopped before Shiraishi felt compelled to hit him. Tactfully, he replied, “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

For the first time in his life, Shiraishi felt like he would rather lose, than win.

“You should just stop. At least for the duration of the training camp.” He called back instead, on the way out. 

He ran smack into Toyama, and barely missed bowling over Hitouji. Konjiki and Oshitari were standing a little further away down the hall, Oshitari rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Don’t you fellows have some laps to run?”

“Buchou,” Toyama looked at him, eyes wide with alarm. It seemed no one had missed the morning’s gruesome sound effects. “What’s wrong with sempai?”

Shiraishi choked back the none-of-your-business, and considered. If Toyama found out about Chitose’s weird cleansing practices, he would probably start doing it himself; he was that gullible. 

Without skipping another beat, he said, “Chitose accidentally touched one of my discarded pinky fingernail clippings.”

Toyama’s eyes went even wider, if that were possible.

Shiraishi lifted his arm menacingly and flared his nostrils melodramatically, like _kabuki,_ “Be sure not to do the same.”


End file.
